What are you talking about in the Terminal? The language you have given is for a Unix system. My Mac PB doesn't recognize it unless I'm entering it in the wrong box. Please explain. Thanks.
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user61315Nov 1 '13 at 20:49

5 Answers
5

The first place you'll most probably want to look at is the Print & Scan option within System Preferences. There you'll see a list of all printers that you have installed. You can optionally uninstall each of them by clicking on the minus '-' at the bottom of the list.

Also, if you are troubleshooting printer issues, you might want to try right-clicking within the list and select Reset printing system. Apple has a document about what resetting the printing system does here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1341

On your question about where the drivers are actually installed, the answer would be in the /Library/Printers folder. I've noticed some printer drivers were left intact in this folder even after I uninstalled them. I've removed some of the files here myself and would say that it is generally safe to do so. However, I'd still suggest that you uninstall your printer drivers from within Print & Scan first before traversing into this folder.

OS X uses CUPS which uses print filters (.ppd files) to format documents to send to printers. The currently installed and used ppd files can be found at /private/etc/cups/ppd/.

To see a whole list of whats available on your computer, look in /Library/Printers/ here you will find folders of drivers that have been installed (usually in folders by brand, i.e you may have a Brother folder and a Canon folder if you ever used a Brother or Canon printer).

There will also likely be a PPDs folder which contains archived print filters that are available.

For some additional printer options you could type:

cupsctl WebInterface=yes

Then point your web browser to http://localhost:631 This will bring up a the CUPS web interface which has a few extra bits and options then you can get at from the System Preference.

It's important to note most of these options have to do with the printing system itself, not the native Printer options/utilities.